Noxing
by Jobey in Error
Summary: Hopelessly AU and discontinued.
1. Which is the Introduction

**A/N: Dedicated to Faith, in absolution for being a non-HP reader, and gratitude for being a terrific friend. Timeline used: the old one where Snape is 35 in OotP. (I nearly had a heart attack, when, one-fourth of the way through this fic, I found Rowling's latest timeline has that crew being 35 at the start of the series, so it went... erm, ignored.) This chapter later to be revised once we actually hear how Aberforth talks in Book 7. **

**Noxing **

**Chapter I – Which is the Prologue **

When he was nine years old, Sirius Black saw a motorcycle. He was with his brother Regulus. It was very seldom they were ever outside in their neighborhood, but the Floo Network had broken down and Apparition, impossible in and out of the house, was necessary.

Mr and Mrs Black were fussing indoors for just a moment with coats and adult chitchat. They were very wary of the attention they would attract from those unknown, unseen neighbours, but they needn't have worried. Nobody save themselves was up, nor was convinced ten-thirty _had_ an a.m. It was _that_ sort of neighborhood, though were it the avenue of millionaires Regulus's aristocratic sneer at it would not have been much less pronounced.

Sirius, however, was interested, not to be put off by the trash blowing down the deadish street on slightish winds. He was snuffling about the unkempt hedges separating number twelve from number fourteen, in which bright but sadly bedraggled streamers were strewn. Even in their forlorn state they were much gaudier than anything the Blacks would ever use. Over the hedge in a thinly-grassed front yard a doll lay naked and decapitated. Sirius had never seen material the like of the doll, hard and shiny. He was on the verge of pointing this out to his younger brother when a rumbling crept into their ears… under their ribcages.

"What's that?" asked Regulus, an unaristocratically fearful note in his voice that suited his years better.

"Is that a _car – _"

Louder and louder every millisecond – and then it zoomed by. Regulus covered his eyes, cowered next to the wall of the house, but, obedient to their father's orders, made not a sound, however instinctive a good long scream was.

Sirius crouched, too, partly ready to kneel and hide his head… but only partly. The greater part stared avidly. Though the view lasted mere seconds, and though Sirius knew very little about those exotic barbarians, non-wizards, he was sure it wasn't exactly a car. It was the wrong size, and shape, and in cars the Muggles inside weren't visible enough for comfort. This one was clearly exposed.

The rumble filled his ears and banged its way through his bone-marrow and then died off.

Mr Black had run out of the house; with the door cracked open, they had heard the noise even within. Normally not a solitary Muggle sound penetrated Mr Black's spellwork. His wand was out. "What happened! What happened!" It was a shouting-whisper. "Sirius! Regulus!"

"It's gone," said Sirius, whose eyes were still fixed on the point of the phenomenon's disappearance. His voice was toneless.

"Don't be so _sure_!" said Mr Black, highly respected first citizen, grabbing Regulus inside by the collar of his robes and beckoning Sirius with his long, knobbly fingers. "You can never trust your senses with Mugglery – "

"What was it?" demanded a shrill voice from inside. It shattered her husband's low-toned cover.

"Remember that, Sirius – never trust your senses with Mugglery – "

"Are the boys all right?"

" – the tricks they get up to – Sirius, come _in_!"

Mrs Black peered. "Did they white his mind?" she asked, with almost clinical interest.

"_Sirius_!"

And Mr Black Summoned his eldest. It hurts a bit to be yanked back thus with that spell, and Sirius did not find his footing before landing. "I was _coming_!"

This was not a nine year old's whine, entirely. The last word was bellowed.

Regulus was trying to cling to his mother's cloak, but that would not do; Mrs Black intended to go to the luncheon and could not have the cloak folded. The foyer was incredibly dark in comparison to the pearl grey sky outside, and Regulus felt as good as blind and deaf.

"So they're both unharmed," said Mr Black, more his dignified self. "I don't suppose they actually met with any Muggle – "

"We didn't," said Regulus.

"When I want you to speak I shall address you," said Mrs Black, all of one half-breath. The other half: "It's _horrible_ around here! It's gone to absolute _filth_!"

"Sirius is crying!" said Regulus loudly. Younger brothers have a tendency toward such helpful public service announcements, and, like older brothers, Sirius had incurred an ever-mounting debt to be capitalized on in such opportunities. "He's crying!"

The parents' heads both jerked to Sirius on the floor. "I am _not_!" But he almost was. Sirius had rarely or never felt contentment or happiness, but this was the first time it ever occurred to him that outside the presence of his family he could. Now, as had happened before, he longed to have them away, so that they didn't drive the vividness of the memory from him any more quickly than would naturally happen, and he joined this longing for the first time with _possibility_. The vexation alone was enough to tax a hungry nine year old, but the bewilderment suffocated his brain to boot.

"Get up from the floor, Sirius," said Mr Black in exasperation. "And quiet, both of you."

They were quiet – it took no noise to glare and make faces and creative mimes at each other as their parents waited tensely before deciding that it might prove safe to step out now. "Hold tight to me," Mr Black ordered, taking out a long piece of reed that snaked around them all of its own bewitched accord (Mr Black could no more manage Side-Along Apparition without this tape than you or I could).

"There really ought to be an Apparition point inside the house," said Mrs Black, loosening the tape around her wrist with her forefinger.

"So that they can get inside?" It was a horrified sneer.

"Orion," Mrs Black said, "Muggles" – she managed to make the funny-sounding world filthy – "cannot Apparate."

"I'd rather take no chances."

Sirius didn't enjoy the Apparition half as much as he anticipated it. You squeeze in on yourself a bit, and then arrive at your destination a bit out of breath a second later, but where was the journey? Not that Sirius could have articulated this, even in thought.

At the Aubreys' the senior Blacks and Regulus looked askance and at times downright snooty at how the house was something less than atmospheric for a party of the undead. Sirius sought trouble. When the adults sat down for tea in another room, he asked Lucinda Aubrey about the not-quite-a-car.

Regulus's large, pale eyes narrowed.

"Don't be a snitch, Regulus," said Sirius, lordingly, cowing all three Aubreys, but not Regulus.

"That doesn't sound like a car to me," said Lucinda. "Sounded like a what-d'you-call-'em. Mortorcycle?"

"Motorcycle," her brother corrected.

"Right."

"Motorcycle," Sirius repeated under his breath, as the unfortunate Mrs Aubrey's lone laugh tinkled throughout the first floor yet quickly, nervously died. Evidently his parents had seized up the Aubreys in much the way Regulus had.

Regulus looked a prince in miniature as he asked why they knew so much about Muggles.

The Aubreys were a smart-alecky family, as later events would prove. Lucinda flared.

"Why _don't_ you?" she demanded, looking down at the boy a good seven years younger than herself. Regulus flinched instinctively toward Sirius but then managed to hold himself as the more-or-less unadulterated blood of a millennium demanded. I don't think I have to tell you that Sirius thought this was a valid question.

In imitation of their parents, the minor Aubreys and Blacks managed to avoid talking to each other until the latter left.

---

Muggle – a being, human or at least humanoid, without the powers of witchcraft and wizardry; colloquially, one without magical powers, uninitiated into the Wizarding community, having only the most rudimentary and often inaccurate knowledge of magic or the existence of magical persons, creatures, artifacts, etc.; often one unaware or in disbelief of the existence of magic; one with no Wizarding contact, born and bred of like persons; v. & cont. _Squib_

("Muggle." The Ingillis Standard Dictionary for the Modern Wizard. Brit. edition. 1967.)

---

The finer readers among us might protest the opening scene. Do nine year old boys really act and think like that?

Don't protest aloud till we reach the '80s at least. This nine-year-old was a Black.

Nipping for a moment into that safer decade, with the Black line much weakened, and never up to protecting Sirius from libel or indeed the truth, we can pretend for a moment he's no such thing – maybe a White or a Green or an Aquamarine, your run-of-the-mill sort of name. We can just assume he's a regular nine year old boy. Do non-Black ones really act and think like that?

Sirius Doe was of the blazing great generation leading up to the First War. For a solid decade and maybe add a few years more, from 1967ish to 1977ish, Hogwarts rattled with the brilliance and energy of the doomed. Mixing up their mythologies quite a bit, newspaper columnists called them the Golden Lambs. It was the sappiest name imaginable, so of course it stuck. And it was widely lamented how so many shooting stars (that was another phrase that hung around this bunch in posterity) died so early, and how so many survivors developed drinking problems, and then the Second War came and devoured quite a few others, and basically no one fun was around from this generation anymore.

In this vein, 1976:

"So. Have you found your doppelganger yet?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well what with all those wunderkinder Gryffindors up at your school lately I figured you'd at last found one of those brats you always said you were sticking around for."

"Ah. That. In point of fact I have given that up… And it is rather rude of you to snicker so."

"Now how can I not? What with all that my poor ear was subject to for the past seventy years, about how you were such a genius that you could only find your intellectual equal in a kid, and that line… Thank you."

"Come now."

"Oh no. I'm crowing, and I'm being petulant, and I'm milking your guilt for all its worth. And now all the sudden he's given it up!" Said to a perfectly inanimate stool. "Heh."

"To make you quite euphoric – yes, I realized I was in the wrong. I cannot place such burdens on my students."

"Albus Dumbledore, admitting he was in the wrong. I've waited for this."

"I know. To you… To your satisfaction, and my resolution. May both last."

The satisfaction lasted till the second drink. The resolution lasted a couple of months. We all have our weak points.

---

"The First War," or the Dark Wizard Voldemort's first of two ascents to power in the British Wizarding community –

That academic clarification hath demolished the mood. Let me begin again.

The First War made its budlike beginning on a sweltering evening with the "disappearance" – and, predictably, murder – of the irritating but innocent Mr H Summers, an employee of –

Never mind that. This is not an account of the war. Only two people, one dead and one as good as, could give that account in toto, of whom I am neither. The angle of my work is a bit different. Our setting is Hogwarts School, which, technically, had nothing to do with the war – indeed, one of the few casualty-free spots in all the country during these eleven years. At least, according to the strict definition of 'casualty.'

Enough of this authorish prattle. It's past time for me to step aside and let Hogwarts open itself up through the students of the war's budding. But just this last: to those unfamiliar with the Houses, pay close attention and learn 'em. There's a lot of information in the next chapter bound to be forgotten, and that's fine, save for anything you can glean of the Houses. There's four, and there all but wouldn't be a story here without them.


	2. Heads, and a few First Years

**A/N: I will acknowledge ideas that I first found in others' fics in the A/N to the particular chapters, even if I can't remember the title or the author. I'm not actively soliciting permission but if you kick up a fuss I will of course rearrange the story around your unauthorized contributions. But I warn that I'm borrowing on the simple grounds that a) we're all writing this stuff by borrowing off another _(DISCLAIMER: Rowling author, goddess, some big company owns rights, not original work, author – me – lays no copyright or creative or any claims at all to this work, for private entertainment, I'm making no profit, better no one else make none either, don't sue me I've no money, etc., etc., we all know the tune)_ and b) even within the bounds of the fandom there's so much rampant borrowing and building off the ideas of another that it's impossible to ask collective permission for use of the most widespread conventions, especially the MWPP/L/S/verymanyvariousothers subfandom, and basically the whole idea of copyrighting here is null and void. As said, will acknowledge, will remove if demanded to do so, and that's already more than most do. **

**First acknowledgment: Mr Lovegood's first name comes from Jaida and Rave's "The Shoebox Project." As do echoes of his characterisation (though his made-up words and stringiness are mine own stamp). As does my whole idea of dressing up an HP fanfic above and beyond the normal, into absurdly pretentious grounds. **

**Second acknowledgment: "Broadmoor" was a surname I first found in auroraziazan's "NotSoLittle White Lies." Finding wizardly-sounding names is tough and that's such a good one. **

**Chapter II – Heads, and a few First-Years **

Even after the mysterious disappearance of Mr H Summers the community-at-large still strove to prevent a war that they didn't realize had already hatched above them. From the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies was the great age of middle-of-the-road appointments to all important posts. In a saner era the scholarly Millicent Bagnold, early orphaned, engrossed in mastering obscure, half-dead branches of magic, and completely unideological, would have wound up an Unspeakable. In 1966 she became Minister of Magic. Ephraim Creed as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Perdita Vance as chief administrator of St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, Elspeth Monkman as the British representative to France, and Oran Abercrombie as captain of the Kenmare Kestrels – in the midst of all this, as sort of an accident, the remarkable Albus Dumbledore became Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Not to say that Dumbledore himself was the accident. The accident was that someone so capable was appointed to anything in that time – especially to so important a post as headmaster of Hogwarts. After all, everyone had been actively seeking mediocrity.

As for Dumbledore himself, nobody wound up surprised after a few months and blinked away and said, "Say, who's that?" How could they not know, with a country-wide debate on whether to take the school board hostage to ensure that they the people got their way in the matter? With compromising sorts assuring everybody that Dumbledore was very old, a venerable token, just an interim figure? And separatists snarling that thinking that one hundred and thirty was on the grave-brink showed a Muggle-lover? And "Muggle-lovers" (who mostly weren't any such thing) making things no better by loudly declaring that they hoped their man outlived them all yet, and filled Hogwarts chockfull of all the Muggle-born wizards he could find, and do whatever else he wanted with the school, because they would support him in everything.

Dumbledore himself didn't help matters. He gave a speech to the school board, who made it a semipublic event, in which he wished to say a few words to reassure those who doubted his good intent.

For one thing, everyone there could see that he wasn't going to be nice and dead in a few years. It was true that even by Wizarding reckoning one hundred and thirty was old, and Dumbledore, appropriate to his years, had a long white beard longer than a scarf. But he was probably in better health than most people in the room half or even a third his age. It was whispered that he was so by magical powers beyond most the rest of them. No one could deny he was one of the best wizards of the age. His love was alchemy, an art nobody else had taken seriously for a couple of hundred years. Some suggested that, like his friend on the Continent who in his six hundreds, Dumbledore had attained the height of that art.

For another thing, those reassuring words went as follows:

"I wish to share a joke with everyone here." (A few rueful smiles from his supporters.) "You all remember Gorrima the Gourmet, of course. A story goes that a respected family of the time invited her to dinner. Gorrima, unfailingly polite, made it clearly but tactfully known that she was feeling light-headed and would rather not eat. Her host asked, 'Musn't the venerable witch who banished two Dark Wizards need take a good many curses in stride?' Gorrima replied, 'Yes. But it is not the same thing when she must needs find them in her roasted fowl.'"

Dumbledore left an expectant pause that signaled the joke was over.

There were a few uneasy laughs.

Eyes twinkling – he was really enjoying himself hugely – he cocked his head and then said, "Maybe I didn't tell it right."

He could afford to joke, and however badly, because there was really no doubt he would get the job. He had been Deputy Headmaster for three decades already, and precedent alone dictated him as next-in-line. No one could quibble over his credentials. The big question was how partisan he was. "We can't reject him on grounds he's a Gryffindor," the governor said dryly, reluctantly fair. Dumbledore had killed the extreme purist Grindelwald, but no one in the civil arena would cite that as proof of his Muggle-lovingness, because Grindelwald had been so blatantly sociopathic that moderate conservatives wanted no truck with him. Otherwise he had done nothing more but advise behind-the-scenes to ease up on admitting Muggle-borns and those with interestingly non-human ancestors, but, by definition, nothing behind-the-scenes is open to public scrutiny. A minority, but a well-placed minority of conservatives gave him their support. So did the Head of Slytherin, who generally speaks for that constituency. (We can't lump Horace Slughorn under conservatives because no one was quite sure what he was, except someone who tried to deny as political or social rifts existed altogether.)

So Dumbledore serenely accepted permission to drop the adjective from his title acting headmaster and set to work on the summer owlings. He appointed a Muggle-born Head Boy. He accepted eight Muggle-borns among the first-years alone. And one werewolf.

The lattermost was the most radical decision, considering the last time a werewolf had set foot in Hogwarts disguised as a student she had done so without the administration's knowledge and would up dead from repeated Stinging Hexes once her cover was blown.

Of course, this was the Middle Ages.

But nobody knew about this decision, so it was the foremost that made the controversy. Controversy buzzed throughout the school for most of Dumbledore's time; he simply piled logs unto the blazing generation. And I think sometimes he enjoyed it.

The Head Boy and Girl of '71 were both to die within ten years. So let's get acquainted.

---

Dear Mum – Hi it's me! I am doing O.K. I like Hogwarts, lots of people here are stupider than me. Of course most everyone else is from magic families, but many of them cann't read or write. Wow! Some others here are Muggles (that means not magic) I met one on the train first thing, her name is Lily. I like that name. But we were sorted into different houses. I am in HUFFLEPUFF which I did NOT want becuase on the train Lily and I were HELD PRISONER by Hufflepuff girls who were a lot older. They kept saying how pretty she was. But not me. But Lily didn't like them either. Anyway I wound up in Hufflepuff but since I am not so pretty they leave me alone most of the time. I don't like any of the girls in this house because they are STUPID. But they all are nice. People say that Muggles like me do best in Hufflepuff because Hufflepuff doesn't hate them. I like some of the Hufflepuff boys. They make me laugh. My best friend here is a boy named Myrom. I think that's a funny name. In one class it is called Defence Against the Dark Arts the teacher has a staff that belonged to some famous witch called Morgan Laffy. We are not allowed to touch it but Myrom pretended like he did and then pretended like he was choking and dying on the floor He wasn't though. The nurse who's name is Madame Pompom was angry at him when she found that out. Myrom is in love with Mercy Mullen who is a Ravenclaw girl our year who is SO beautiful but I always pretend with Myrom that I think she's ugly. She's not though.

I am starting a new paragraph because lots of people here don't know about paragraphs. The magic here is very neat. Hogwarts is a big castle with secret passages and everything but the secret passages more around sometimes. There are REAL GHOSTS. There is also a giant around here I've seen a few times. Myrom says no its not a giant its just a hagred and his brother knows him. I think he hit his head on the floor too hard. Myrom I mean. Because it IS a giant.

We haven't learned ANY spells in class yet! It is all talking notes which is silly because like I said a lot of them cann't write. But Myrom's brother has showed him some and other Hufflepuffs show us a lot. I can change colours on things now. I can also make a blue light on the end of my wand and also make water shoot out the end of it which is SO much fun to shoot at people. I can't make things fly yet but Myrom can. I promise to learn lots. I would write more but this letter has taken me an hour already. I will write more later.

I love you.

Samantha

---

It's 1971 – 1 September. 1 September _always_ begins Hogwarts's term, be it any day of the week, or when the Apparition point is under Muggle martial law, as in 1645. Of course there is no longer the traditional broom flight to get there – the old fashion had a nasty habit of killing would-be students or losing them "somewhere in the countryside," and so with the advent of Muggle technology wizards synthesized it. You've heard from the extreme conservatives; the extreme liberals are of the opinion that wizards are intellectual parasites.

If you go to King's Cross Station – that's in London, in England, and yes, it actually exists – and stop between the nondescript platform nine and the even duller platform ten, with all the smells and plastic and bacterially colonized handrails, and lean against the wall – well, nothing will happen to _you_. If you went 1 September, and hung around, and watched – and you needn't be very careful, mind. This was 1971, and wizards were convinced that Muggles never noticed anything. (The Sixties had just been rollicking through, so this isn't as delusive a belief as it might have been.)

You may have seen person after person go right through that wall… right into thin concrete. And you would've ached to know what was on the other side that remained so closed to you, no?

The shrill voices of British schoolchildren. The long-suffering yells of their parents. Toddlers wailing and tantruming, the cawking of caged – and uncaged – birds, the meowing of content cats, the shrieking of cats whose tails had been stepped upon by some ungainly human, the booms of miscast spells… students got rusty over the summer, you weren't allowed to do magic outside of Hogwarts until seventeen… the tossing of firecrackers, the swishing of the cloaks of the Blacks, who were the only ones in wizarding robes among a garish mess of the mismatching, would-be Muggle-donned, the slamming of sliding glass doors, the oomphing of baggage handling and tossing, the chuffing of an engine eye-scarringly scarlet, which was the Hogwarts Express – and all of the above was Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters. Tourists often overlook it.

Today there is a loud shout of "Op-PY!" booming through all the rest every so often. It's mostly Mike Zeller, who shuts up only because Frank Longbottom makes motions to hex him in annoyance.

Oppy – or young Mr Wilfed Croniss, to his friends – has already curled deep back in a nice and solitary compartment, amidst mountains of luggage. But then there is a last call, and, with great reluctance, he emerges from his hiding, and stumbles to the front of the train, shoulders slouched as a barrier to several catcalls.

The chaos is increasing – the stationmaster is bellowing about five minute warnings, and there are shrieks and scuffles to secure their spots on the train and to yell farewells – the engine releases a great chuff of steam – it rises to a pitch – a dozen different children are bawling their eyes and lungs out – the train is moving noisily – and hundreds, almost a thousand people are shouting – it's out of sight, leaving behind hundreds of Apparitiatory poppings, like a monster piece of bubble wrap, or, in our new Wizarding terms, like a boiling cauldron of some noisily bubbling concoction.

---

(_To the Moon family from their middle son, Henry) _

Hello it's me. I'm sorry. But I'm doing bad. We have to do a lot of writeing at hogwarts. I'm trying really hard to learn. There are some here from mugle families. Who already learned at there schools. And even some of the other purebloods laf becuase they say my writeing looks like a baby's. I'm learning how to do it fast as I can. Clive's wand does not work for me very good. They say it does not work good unless its your own. Can I get my own for my birthday. I am looking for ward to flying brooms next Thursday. I also like the food here. The desserts most of all. When we all lurn how to make water come out of our wands we will have a fite out side this weekend. There is lots of room out side. Yes tir day most of the Slytherin 1 year boys tryed to run arond the hule castill. I made it farther then any one.

---

Inside the train, dodging aside to leave room to students chasing each other and the witch evermore faithfully pushing that snack trolley –

To the older students the compartments are quite roomy, and themselves quite limby. They're in great big laughing packs. The younger escape claustrophobia by hanging together in two and threes. I'm afraid we'll have to leave them behind. We're entering the prefects' compartment. All twenty four were more or less squished inside one for a meeting. I say more or less – many were standing in the corridor, with the door open to listen, or not to listen, as pleases each. Inside were only the Greengrass faction. You and I can enter – we must, if we're to meet at last the Head Boy and Girl. Why, you've met the former already – Oppy is now next to the window seat, chin in hand on elbow on windowsill, staring at the fast-flashing countryside scenery. He could not be more overshadowed by Persis Greengrass, who is calling for silence. In the past hour and a half they have already established a pattern with Persis's calls for attention. Persis orders quiet at an unurgent volume. Everyone begins to obey, wrapping up the last bit of their conversation. While waiting, Persis gets distracted by one of her friends, and they start their own conversation. Meanwhile everyone else figures she means to do nothing and their own talks pick up steam. Persis comes to and yells at them all for being inattentive.

"All right, everybody, we have to stop wasting time. It's been almost two hours now and we haven't got all that much done." It was a statement of beautiful honesty. Persis felt no pressure. Half the prefects were friends of hers. A wide circle of relatives meant a wide circle of friends meant a bright future meant she glowed enough to almost be worthy of her one great beauty, her red-gold hair (that to Oppy seemed deliberately taunting).

To be fair to Persis – it would be hard for anyone to lead this group. This cross-section of Hogwarts featured first the Greengrass-supportive faction, composedly mainly of her many friends, who were composed mainly of family acquaintances and retainers.

Another popular group – who represented a group of very _male_ Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, whom we'll call "The Boys" – consisted of the sixth-year male Gryffindor (Mike Zeller, occupied with controlling an orange cat), the seventh-year male Gryffindor (Frank Longbottom, who owned the cat, sort of), and the seventh-year male Hufflepuff, Nathaniel Perks (with whom the cat often spent the night). They were friendly to the Greengrass faction, but independent, and high-spirited, the noisiest talkers. They would do their duties and then get on to the good bits. They also had nicknamed Croniss "Oppy," for intoxicated reasons not entirely clear now even to them. Did they need a reason? They were secure enough.

Then again, there were also "The Slytherins" – the seventh-year male Lucius Malfoy, the seventh-year female Bellatrix Black, and the sixth-year male, Jarvis Eames, all of whom simply stood together and back and looked scorn upon Persis's chatty helmship. They would soon enough progress to saying barbed things, but first they were waiting for the Greengrass faction to self-destruct. With such incompetence how could it _not_?

There were three other Slytherins. They are not _the_ Slytherins. Indeed, like most of the Ravenclaws, who were uncomfortable and wishing they were with their own friends or had a book, they were all fairly alone, and among those standing outside the compartment. These included the fifth-year Richard Moran. Even at fifteen he was distinguished-looking, with the classical Moran nose. These Slytherins and Ravenclaws could have wielded great power as a bloc, but they never got around to cohesion.

The next group, privileged to also sit in the compartment with the diehard Greengrassites, although not of them, consisted solely of the two sixth-year Hufflepuffs, Zenobia Dobbs and Ted Tonks, who in an almost Ravenclawish manner were perfectly content to leave the squabbles to everyone else, and to talk together (they were both great talkers), occasionally interrupting the meeting with laughter. Usually Hufflepuffs did do this; they patterned the platonic relationship decades before it teenagers took it up all throughout the English-speaking world.

Anyone not mentioned was squarely in the Greengrass majority.

"Okay, is that all settled now?" Persis was asking, in one of her ephemeral businesslike spurts. "Everybody, shut up and listen! Now, the password to the prefects' meeting room is going to be _the Croftwell evasion_."

"Is it?" asked Oppy, without taking his eyes from the window. His tone rather put a damper to the incipient approval, for at the moment Sean Croftwell was the best-loved figure in all of Wizarding Britain. (Quidditch. We'll get to the technicalities of the Croftwell evasion later, maybe.)

"Yes," said Persis agreeably, rolling her eyes, "it is."

"Oh, right. I do remember discussing that with you and agreeing to it, now."

"Glad to hear it. Now, that's pretty much it, isn't it? Does anyone have any questions?"

There was a very loquacious negative. In a corner of the compartment, two sixth-years – the Slytherin female and the Ravenclaw male – were busily ignoring proceedings together. Nathaniel Perks had squeezed into the compartment after the erstwhile cat while the rest of The Boys continued to horse around outside. The Slytherin faction was considering a very pointed, ill-natured question. But Oppy Croniss was a faction all of himself. "Why don't we have all the new fifth-years introduced?" he asked archly.

With an effort, Persis controlled herself. "Right. All right. I know Francine… and Darius… and Dill… who're you?" she gestured to a fifth-year girl, who immediately looked twice as ill-at-ease as before.

"I don't know who they all are," said Oppy. "Francine who?" (Francine flipped her hair over her shoulder with a little laugh.) "Maybe they should all introduce themselves, and say their House."

There was a slight pause. Then the fifth-year girl, taking a little heart from Oppy, said that she was Clover Marwood of Ravenclaw. One at a time they all followed her lead, even the favoured three.

"Do you lot all know what Houses all the rest of us are in?" Oppy asked, appealing directly to the fifth-years over the head of the cliquey Gryffindor leadership. "I think maybe this year, to promote inter-House unity, all the fifth-years should be assigned to two older prefects from _two different Houses_. Look, I worked it all out here – " And he rummaged in his schoolbag for the appropriate piece of parchment. But Oppy was infamously slow, and his bag an infamous mess of crumpled parchment, so the others had a chance to at last stop being polite about the two-hour tension they had just endured, partly at Oppy's hands.

"Look, Oppy," said Dill, "everybody knows the only reason you're Head Boy is because Dumbledore wanted to make sure a Muggle-born got it."

There was a laugh – a laugh partly ashamed, but agreeing.

"Was I?" asked Oppy. "I suppose I'm too out of the loop to even know that."

He always spoke slowly, and Persis, ever-quicker, overrode a good half his words by saying, "Yeah, that doesn't mean you get to make any executive decisions or anything."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Clover Marwood. "I thought I was at the prefects' meeting. I thought this was a prefects' meeting, not a purists' get-together, not a Muggle-bashing rally."

She spoke long enough that everybody at last heard at least some of what she said.

"What Muggle-bashing rally?" asked Mike Zeller.

Clover looked at him with great directness, considering she was a year younger, and much out of his social circle. "I've watched you and Longbottom patronise him for years. You call him Oppy even though he hates that name."

"We don't hate Muggles!" said Mike, exchanging an outraged look with Frank Longbottom.

"I'm not bashing Muggles, Croniss isn't a Muggle, he's as much a wizard as me," said Dill.

"Better," pointed out Clover.

"Yeah, exactly. But he has no business being Head Boy. I'm sorry, Oppy, but you're not, you're not the Head Boy type. Everyone knows Tiberius McLaggen should have been. Dumbledore just wanted a Muggle-born, and didn't want to appoint two cousins."

This stirred The Boys. Frank Longbottom only had his badge because Tiberius McLaggen had sent his back during the summer in a huff over this whole little affaire.

"Right!" Mike nodded. "He just didn't want two Gryffindors, and the Hufflepuffs are too cosy with us too I suppose, and he didn't want to seem like he was favouring us, and that's – well, mate, that's pretty much why you're here. Glad to have you and all, but – " He shrugged most agreeably.

Oppy took a long stare at them all and then pulled out his wand. Everyone (that is, the Greengrassites) flinched until he went off in the corner and used it to blow random bubbles and sparks into the air, a practice then called "fripping," in slang.

Persis ordered them all out to patrol corridors, and introduce the unknown first-years to the proprieties of Hogwarts and report miscreants, and then she went out laughing with those among the prefects who were her friends. Oppy sighed, curled up in a corner, and fripped as the train rattled forward.

---

Dear Mother and Father,

I was Sorted into Ravenclaw! I'm as surprised as anyone else, but Ravenclaw is a decent House, isn't it? It's not as if I was Sorted into _Hufflepuff_, is it? Actually I find it quite satisfactory. Of course it has its share of odd ducks. Being in Ravenclaw means putting up with this enormous pest Lovegood each evening. Two of my roommates are Muggle-born (one with distant Wizarding relatives). Still even the Muggle-borns aren't as low as some of the Slytherin purebloods. In the dormitory we all expected I'd be in there is one of those long-haired Moon boys. There's also the son of a blood traitor, with a Muggle name. The one's far too country and the other's far too city so far as I can see. The others in my dormitory are Quirke, Higgs, and Broadmoor, though, so that's all right. But as to that Sorting, I told off Jarvis and Spalding as soon as I saw them, let me tell you. We did _not _have to get past a troll. I do think it would have been good of _you _to have simply told me about the Sorting Hat. I don't see why it was such a great secret. Indeed it was a pretty ratty hat.

Say hello to Eugene for me. I wish I had been the youngest so I could be home alone for a couple of years. Tell him I said that if he keeps studying Astronomy will be _extremely _easy for about two years, as I see it.

I'm actually most enjoying Transfiguration. Potions is interesting; the Muggle-borns don't understand the attractions of it. History of Magic has the most absurd textbook. Have you ever read it? It calls Spurius de Huguén Spurius the Splenetic and describes him as a "mad and cruelextremist." No mention of that little detail of having saved the entire village of Beaslebury, although the book later blames "Slytherin politics" for its destruction two centuries later. And J. and S. are right: that class is very boring, the way it is taught. Father, you've told us it used to be done quite differently, right?

Yours sincerely,

Beverly

P.S. Is Mullen a suitable family?

---

Night was falling, and Lionel Lovegood came into the prefects' compartment to find Oppy exactly as before. Oppy knew that Lovegood was in on the Ravenclaw's busybody newspaper-like production, and immediately groaned. "I deny everything. I don't talk about what went on in prefects' meetings. Tell you editor to – " And here he said something enormously rude.

Lovegood was not in the least put off. He was a stringy, colourless, washed-out, battered creature, long at the bottom of the male adolescent food chain. Oppy's dirtiest didn't faze him. "I don't care about that," he said, with magnificent unconcern. "But I've been collecting theories as to where the name 'Oppy' arose. Was it from some supposed resemblance to the infamous tricorn breeder Hal Oppenheimer? Is it from the Greek phrase 'opus magnum' – or, in English 'shining opal' – and therefore a coded reference to the by-product of that censored experiment by the fearless radical Rosalind Bungs? Or, while they were _very_ intoxicated, did they by chance ask you to open the door, with Oppy resultant their best effort, which – to the perverse amusement signat of all drunks – stuck? Or does it come from you once trying to hex them – with _opsoleturus_?" he finished, hopefully. "I thought Mike Zeller seemed to be blowing his nose a great deal more than usual the past year or so."

For once, Oppy looked rather startled, but he recovered quick enough. "Why not ask Zeller and Longbottom and Perks and Pucey and all the rest of that lot?"

"I considered it," said Lovegood, as Frank Longbottom's independent-minded gold cat tried to crawl up his leg. "But I don't think I'll get an answer. They, they think I'm weird."

"Do they."

Oppy the Saturnine was never in such danger of smiling in all his life.


	3. Two Nieces Take Up Quills

**A/N: Let's see, have I any acknowledgments for this chapter?... ah yes! The chairs inching toward(s) the fire I found from Pirate Perian's "Of Wolf and Wizard." It's not her most recommendable fic (which is merely a compliment to the rest of 'em, never fear!), but I only _wish _I could do a Sirius like the one in there. **

**Chapter III – Two Nieces Take Up Quills **

This is a half-and-half chapter. It's also short.

Within those hallowed (and ever-changing) halls of Hogwarts there were, at the same time, but never once speaking to each other, two girls of the same year. Both wrote to their aunts-by-marriage before their first week of their sixth year was out. Our first half:

4-8-71

Dear Aunt Helen,

As promised, I've been keeping an eye on your boy. I don't think you have anything to worry about. James has made himself popular, as usual. He's the pet of half the older students because of all us nice cousins and our nice friends, and lords it completely over the other first years, all of whom like it. (Of course, he steers clear of the Black heir who was Sorted here into Gryffindor.) It must be nice to be the youngest. _I _didn't walk around Hogwarts like I'd owned it the first night.

How are the dinners to promote the Merpeople Manifesto going? My mum says you're barking about them. She also says you and Uncle Lot don't discipline James enough. That's all right with

Your loving niece

Mathilde

who then flicked down her downy quill, waved the parchment in the air so that the ink would dry, and quickly folded it. She was keeping half an ear on her friends' conversation. Lorraine was squealing about some Ravenclaw boy as Barbara did her hair. Joan and Corey were having one of the loudest and projectile-ish games of wizarding chess ever. Mitchell and Manuel were being disgusting and charming. Mathilde smiled to herself. It was good to be back. It was also nice to own the place, now even if not on the first night.

Gryffindor is the nosiest common room. Paper planes were being charmed to slam into the sides of people's heads, whether through ineptitude or mischief. Flavia Birtwhistle was singing to a willing audience of five and an unwilling audience of the entire common room, minus five. One of the sixth-year prefects was yelling at some third-years who kept lobbing objects of unknown magical properties in the fire, to see the effects thereof, which mainly seemed to be violent sparks that kept singeing the stage-struck Flavia. In the midst of this chaos Mathilde looked around for her sister and cousin. The latter was not in the common room, although his curfew must have been close. Mathilde shook her head. Juliana was trying to be studious whilst Jerry Manderling tried to get her to not be studious. Mathilde smiled. Outside the windows here at the tip of Gryffindor Tower, there was a lovely haze of deep gold.

The bulletin board was groaning under one week's worth of student-posted notices. There were notices for all sorts of clubs' first meetings of the year – Gryffindor Quidditch team, choir, flute choir, lyre choir, Chess Club, Charms Club, the junior branch of the Wizard Writers Wring (whose reputation the malapropisms of such members as Lionel Lovegood have destroyed), the Skeleton Company (for budding thespians), the Gobstones Club, the Transatlantic Penpals, the Anglo-Hispanic Penpals, the Christmas Carolers' Club, a support group for stutterers, the Stargazers' Society, the Kenmare Kestrels' Fan Club (junior branch), _The Triad _(the newspaper, mostly run by Ravenclaws but whose meetings were always widely promulgated in wishful hopes), various intramurals, and a rather mysterious entity called the The Purple Lethifolds' Yokohama Left Fingleberry Two-Knut Association for the Chronically Absurd, the content of whose meetings was classified by those who knew, and not very actively pursued by those who didn't. There were lists of wanted and offered Chocolate Frog cards. Some anonymous and unread wit kept posting parodies of famous Juvnip sonnets with Hogwarts references. Some much more appreciated artist had been caricaturing members of the staff for about a year now, and all five were still posted. The prefects could be unfairly selective about what was posted and what wasn't – the caricatures, yes, but the notices of The Purple Lethifolds seldom lasted long. They had forbidden the practice of posting holiday pictures, but their friends' pictures often stayed. So did Bette Turpin's with her tan and Muggle swimgear.

Outside they could faintly hear explosions: Peeves the Poltergeist was about. The Fat Lady, guardian of Gryffindor common, was shrieking at him. With the courage typical of their House, all the prefects were edging each other to be the one to go out there and face the undignified practical jokes that would result from trying to get rid of Peeves. Earlier that week, regardless of her status, Persis Greengrass had wound up with an egg cracked over her head, yolk tricking down her red-gold hair, and the round little man floating above her and cackling abominably. "The rigours of Head Girlship!" Tiberius McLaggen had called cheerfully.

They hadn't spoken since.

Personally Mathilde had been very amused. She was supposed to like Persis – their families were friendly – but Persis could be hard to share a dormitory with. But then Mathilde regretted her amusement and made up for it by letting Persis copy a Potions assignment. Persis copied like an insatiable plagiaristic succubus. Mathilde wasn't entirely innocent herself – but then, she was not Head Girl, and an example to one and all.

Mathilde told herself that she was being mean-spirited, and to quit. She did.

James came in, the magnetic centre of rather a slew of first- and second-years. "You're late, Potter!" called Mike Zeller lazily, perhaps feeling as though he should fulfill some prefectorial duty for at least one instance that day.

"You depend on Juliana to pass Potions, Zeller!" James shot back. "Right, Jule?"

Dear God. He was a monster. Little princeling Black could never have lorded over the Slytherin common room as James did the Gryffindor.

"Oh, leave him alone, Mike," agreed Juliana absently, from where she and Jerry were bent over _something _at their coffee table. "Like you're always on time."

Mathilde shot him a glare, which James blithely ignored. The whole crew around him was rather in an uproar. Mathilde didn't even want to know.

---

4-8-71

Dear Aunt Denebola,

I take up my quill to you not out of any presumption, but I'm aware that it is imperative that you are not caught off guard by tale-tellers and gossips. I also doubt Sirius himself will tell you. Your elder son has been Sorted into Gryffindor.

It will be more difficult, but of course he will always have a watchful eye kept on him at Hogwarts by,

Your respectful niece

Bellatrix

Bellatrix Black was not a favourite of her aunt's. Nor of any of the adult Blacks. She was too headstrong, too unruly, too clumsy, too unmaidenly, too inept. Of course, their opinion of her improved after she had spent a few years at school. Absence augments affection, and all. She was not the best of students, but the Blacks didn't care for such things. She had powerful reserves of magical power (which she showed off most immodestly at nearly every soiree by setting off her abundant showers of wand-sparks), knew what she was about in the important things, was a voracious reader of all the right books, and a leader. As of now, her seventh year, she was the undisputed queen of Slytherin, which danced to her tune.

No – I suppose somewhat disputed. Another Slytherin prefect, the male seventh-year, Lucius Malfoy – he did look down upon her. It was the plan between the two families that Lucius would marry one of the Black girls, and originally everyone had rather expected it to be Bellatrix, for they were of the same year. But it wasn't quite working. Malfoys, being fast climbers in the social game in this century (after a century of decline which the Blacks were polite enough to only very seldom allude to), _did_ care for decorum and high marks and sanity and trifles like that. Lucius Malfoy was the leader of a different segment of Slytherin, and whilst his and hers were not exactly in competition, nor were they exactly comfortable together. Lucius's followers were political and ambitious – Bixby, Yaxley, Jugson, the Eames brothers. Bellatrix's – Avery, Rosier, Wilkes, and the Lestrange brothers most notably – didn't understand politics even when politics was trying to throw them into prison – except perhaps for her most recent addition. Who was currently sitting beside her as she sealed her letter. Bellatrix fully intended to make him go to the Owlery, find her owl Onyx, and post the letter for her, but she would wait until it was late, past first-years' curfew. Instead she picked up a book, as had he.

This is the Slytherin common room. Unlike Gryffindor (and Ravenclaw), Slytherin does not reside in a tower but in one of the larger and safer basements. Also unlike Gryffindor and Ravenclaw (and Hufflepuff), the chairs in the common room do not inch closer to the fire once the temperature drops. They're well-trained, those chairs. Only consider how cold it gets here. In the Hufflepuff basement the temperature is a good degree or two colder than the rest of the school, it being a basement. In Slytherin, it's closer to ten degrees. Rumour has it that's because back when Salazar Slytherin was still alive (and back when Slytherin truly was all pure blood) he wanted to "chill out" any student too poor and too wimpy. Evidently quite of few of those who fell under those categories hopped right over to Hufflepuff and founded Hufflepuff dynasties. Hufflepuff was rather a crowded House – but no digressions! Back to Slytherin. Back to its cosy common. Whose bulletin board has but four small, perfectly uncluttered, pertinent notices.

There were endlessly tall windows, or dark green curtains over facsimiles of windows (we're in a basement, recall). The great fireplace is rather noisier yet rather dimmer in light than Gryffindor's. Instead of candles confined to the walls, there are magical balls of pure white light dancing overhead. If you sit down on one of the stately old chairs with a book, sooner or later one of those lights will bop rather merrily over to you. There's quite a lot of people playing chess. The room is crowded, but subdued. In Gryffindor it's the common room that's noisy and the dormitories that are the bastions of peace. In Slytherin it's the opposite and corridors can crackle with the tension – there is so little unity in Slytherin. "Yes," admitted Ludmilla Vance in one of her recent articles, "in Slytherin we're all conservatives, but we're all different _kinds _of conservatives." But nor was that true – mostly you can't count on Ludmilla Vance for accuracy – some of the most radical radicals have come from Slytherin. Not very many. But any there have been actually had an impact. Slytherin is results-oriented. It's also west-oriented, and there are some splendid Scottish sunsets where the day goes down fierily from the Branched Tower, which sits right atop the Slytherin common room.

One other thing about the Slytherin common room: there are empty chairs, yet some Slytherins are on the floor or on chairs far from the fire. Not much like Gryffindor, where the phrase "move ya feet, lose ya seat" practically originated. Slytherins will challenge each other for seats if necessary. It's not half so cutthroat as some claim it is – on a day-to-day basis – but if you try out the chair of someone more powerful than yourself, you _will _be shooed out when he returns, or else you will be challenged to a duel, and come to think of it you might get the duel anyway, though not as a sure-and-certain thing.

"A sure-and-certain thing" is a Slytherin-original phrase. Gryffindors still won't use it – not so much on anti-Slytherin principle as because "a sure-and-certain thing" is so foreign to their contemplations. As are contemplations.

Oh, look – some poor presumptuous non-Black second-year is getting evicted just now. Rabastan Lestrange has returned from somewhere-or-another, a seventh-year with a closed face that does not really distinguish him from many other seventeen-year-old boys. Which is the scary thing.

He sat, an arm on each armrest, examining the rest of the room – rather restlessly, but you don't just go up to someone without scouting out matters first. He first considered seeing if it was safe to talk to – but, no, Bella was here. And then, after a last scan, he saw something that made him do a double-take. Another scan, to consider things some more. Then he sauntered over, trying to convince himself that he wasn't scared of Bellatrix Black, and her relentless blows to his self-esteem.

"'Evening, Bella."

"Hello, Rab." There was a tacit question in her voice: _Why don't you have anything to do?_ But she kept reading rather than ask. He waited, shifting from one foot to another. Then, like the carefully bred gentleman he was, he upturned the chair of a nobody fourth-year girl and sat down on it backwards, considering them with dull eyes.

"Say, Bella," he said after a moment. "What's that?" He inclined his head to the small body presumably hidden under a greasy dark head. It was clear that Rabastan had come over to find this and would not settle until informed.

Bellatrix looked up with her usual flattening gravity. "Pardon?" She managed to make the word mean the opposite of what it originally meant.

"What's that?"

"His name's Snape, and he's the most accomplished curse-caster among all the first years."

"Who?"

In point of fact he was the most accomplished curse-caster going up to at least sixth year, likely seventh, and possibly more so than herself. But Bellatrix wasn't about to lavish the praise of that acknowledgement upon him.

"He is not," said Bellatrix, "pureblooded."

"My mother is," said the miniature curse-caster quickly, in the indefinitely gendered voice of the pre-adolescent. Rabastan had to start laughing as the boy looked up. He was _so_ little, and _so_ ugly, and _so _eager, and _so_ vulnerable, and sitting right here next to the queen of Slytherin as they both intently pursued their books, the common activity contrasting the two even more ludicrously than otherwise. And after that guffaw he proceeded to ignore the little one.

God, if there was one thing Severus Snape hated, it was being ignored!


	4. Squicked

**A/N: Let's see… why, no acknowledgments for this chapter. I was entirely original! Of course, it's terribly short; there will be a reprise later. Now, the next chapter… ooh, not half so original, lots of credits… yet it's one of my favourites in the whole fic. **

**Chapter IV– Squicked**

4 September

Dear Mum and Daddy and Petunia,

I'm OK! Hogwarts is amazing. All the pictures move, like in our book, but only the portraits on the wall talk to us. I was lost getting to Transfiguration yesterday but a picture of a witch tied to the stake gave me directions. Transfiguration is one of the classes. You learn how to turn one thing into another. But we haven't done it yet. There are also ghosts here. One of them is scary, he's called the Bloody Baron, but none of them hurt you. The others are nice. My roommates are named Deirdre, Vivian, Maeve, Trish, and Phaedra. None of them is as good in class as me, even though none of them came from a family of all Muggles. Phaedra's whole family is witches but – and wizards too I suppose – but she does not know how to read or write almost at all. But they are all very friendly and everything. Petunia, you said all the girls would be awful and mean. How do you like your new school? I miss Whitetip. Other students have cats. May I bring him after I come home for Christmas? One of the big boys has a cat who does not like him, so it goes round with everybody else. He is called Greymalkin. The caretaker also has a cat called Mrs Norris and Barbara Wimple who is one of the big girls says that Mrs Norris will tell the caretaker if she finds you breaking any rules. So you see Whitetip would not be lonely. Daddy, do you still remember to take your medicine even without me to remind you? Remember what the doctor said. Maybe I'll find some magic that works on your headaches better while I'm here. I have just been helping Phaedra look over my Potions notes and they say that some people discover new Potions as medicines. But it will take a long time. We haven't made any so far and also haven't learned any spells in class. It's all note-taking. I told Phaedra once we stop writing and start doing real magic she'll be doing better than me because after all she's been around magic her whole life. I haven't spoken to Professor McClenaghan since I've arrived. No one takes Muggle Studies until third year. I see her at meals in the Great Hall. The ceiling of the Great Hall is enchanted so that it looks like the sky and you see stars, the sun, storms, and everything. At meals I have also seen Professor Dumbledoor, who is headmaster. I do not know if I spelled his name right, but he looks like that picture in the book Great-Aunt Katherine illustrated. Only his beard is a little shorter than in the book. There is also someone around who looks like a giant. Also like in the book, one of the teachers, Professor Klingston, has the magical staff of Morgan le Fay in his room. We're not allowed to touch it. I told Phaedra and Vivian all the things about magic and Hogwarts I put in this letter to tell you and asked if I forgot anything. Phaedra said I forgot to tell you about the Houses. But I don't think the Houses are very important, so I'll write you about them some other time.

Love,

Lily

---

Lily Evans spent a good deal of her first few months in a state of numbness – some parts of her mind had shut down to delegate their valuable resources to the parts more crucial to everyday functioning. Indeed up until her second year I'm not sure Lily could have told you whether or not she liked or disliked Hogwarts, was glad or sorry to have been a witch instead of an ordinary girl like her old friends from whom she was now sundered… but even at her numbest Lily drew several thrills from the knowledge that were her mother able to witness her experiences, she, Lily, would not have to make the decisions. She would have been _out_.

The very first thing she did upon arriving in the middle of the place-whose-name-could-not-be-disclosed-Mr-Evans-I'm-sorry was sail across a moat that housed, as she was soon told, a giant squid with a taste for the flesh of firsties. The very second thing was to put on a hat of unknown origin or cleanliness that several other children of like origin had just put on _their_ heads whose cleanliness remained _similarly unknown_. Lily found it mostly exciting, but definitely a bit scary. Sometimes more than a bit. The ghosts did not creep her out very much, as some of her classmates assumed they would, she being a Muggle-born, but the hat – it took a great deal of Gryffindorism just to put it on! But she did, pulling it down over her the crown of her long red hair, and it very wisely declared her a Gryffindor, which it had just serenaded as the place for "those of nerve and sinew strong."

She knew it would all horrify her mother and sister, and though her father's general maleness would have saved him from horror, he would not have been altogether pleased either. So right from the start she got practice in – not, not _lying_ to her parents, exactly, no, but – well, pruning the truth for prudence's sake. This practice proved useful to her, later.

In Herbology Lily found herself the most conscientious cleaner of her hands after classes and in Transfiguration she required some time to not shudder at this handling of beetles. But it was Potions that most shook her.

Did I mention that Mrs Evans keeps her household scrupulously clean?

Her first two Potions classes were, strictly speaking, uneventful; a professor who could have passed for one of her own father's very Muggle friends (though rather fatter) instructed them in the care and cleaning of cauldron and tools. Lily had eyed the stewing potions made by the fifth-years, bubbling low as they matured in the dark corners, but had not worried about it. Lily was not one to worry. Then the third class came and, just the same as if she had worried, the assignment was to create a potion.

The actual third step in their directions literally used the word "squelch." As in: "Take a handful a frog liver between both palms. Squelch the liver so that liquids are wrung into the dish. Then add the dried liver into the cauldron. (CHECKPOINT COLOUR: GREY)"

They were also using worms in this potion. The sixth step, and second to last (it was a simple potion): "Add two live flobberworms. (Check to see that flobberworms are sufficiently alive by poking them in both ends at the same time: live flobberworms will react, recoiling and spitting a small quantity of harmless goo.) (CHECKPOINT COLOUR: DARK ORANGE)"

Lily had heard that Professor Slughorn was most accomplished in the area of potions, but she had serious doubts that his fingernails had ever been exposed to frog liver or worm goo nevertheless.

This was the first time Lily considered not being a witch. Although torn by her departure from home, she had been downright enchanted with the idea ever since presented with it. Some snide remarks about Muggle-borns had made her warier than she might have been, but not deterred her. Now she sat back and took account – witchcraft seemed a great deal less centered on waving fairy wands of gently raining glitter than she had imagined. Seven years of this? When at home as a Muggle she would never have to squelch frog liver or check the mortal status of flobberworms, nor be sundered from everyone she knew? She eyed her classmates, or at any rate her girl classmates: surely even born-and-bred witches were grossed out by this? It was an odd occurrence that none in fact were, and had Lily been in almost any other class she would have seen the comforting sight of other girls making faces and handling gingerly. But there were always fewer squeamish girls in Gryffindor House, and in this class there happened to be none, evidently, save her very out of place self.

She swallowed and delved into the frog liver, wincing hard at the distinctly squelchy sound of her squelching, and then smiling at it, however feebly or crookedly. In fact she began to have so much fun that she was disappointed when she had finished wringing out a more than ample amount of frog liver.

It turned out no one else had wrung it hard enough, and Lily's potion was at a state of completion at the end of a class that set on several of her valiant-hearted classmates waving away the fumes of their potions with their hats or desperately throwing anything within reach into their cauldron in hopes of it looking like anything but broiled and sullied water before their professor arrived at their table to inspect. Slughorn was given to hearty praise and it finished off the process of her re-emboldening. She left the class grinning almost too broadly as her roommate Phaedra Bungs relived in increasingly exaggerated detail the misfortunes of her fickle burner.

---

Mudblood – a term, currently considered very offensive, referring to a witch or wizard of Muggle parentage; usually refers to a witch or wizard without any wizarding blood at all, but some use it to refer to anyone less than a pureblood; there are incongruities and debates as to whether the child of a wizard and a Muggle-born is a pureblood or a half-blood and therefore the use of this invective term varies, often by locale and class. _History and comments_: As late as the early 1600's "Mudblood" was considered a matter-of-fact alternative to the more offensive term "Muggle," as Muggle itself once had very vulgar connotations, and also because Muggle-born wizards desired that they not be called Muggles when they obviously had magical powers. Today, however, it is generally accepted that this term is not appropriate in mixed company, and "Muggle-born" is the social norm. It is of interest to lexicographers and word-lovers that "Muggle" has become a more acceptable, and "Mudblood," less acceptable. Speculations on current words which will acquire negative connotations and pass out of decent vocabularies are rampant. _Squib _is a word some feel will one day be replaced, while others feel that actually is it less insulting now than it ever was. V. _Muggle _V. & cont. _Muggle-born_ V. & cont. _Squib_

("Mudblood." The Ingillis Standard Dictionary for the Modern Wizard. Brit. edition. 1967.)

---

A few weeks later after the same class Trisha Smethley pulled her a little away from everyone else. Lily had already concluded that Trish was the cleverest of their shared dormitory, but she was also the least fun, and Lily was eager to join the rest.

"Oh, Lily, by the way," Trish, said, lowering her voice a little, "you told us the first night that you're Muggle-born, and we're okay with that and all, but I wouldn't go advertising it, the way you did in there today."

Lily, even when startled, was very direct. "But why wouldn't someone be okay with it?"

"Well, we're Gryffindors, so we don't mind, and so it doesn't matter that your childhood was different because none of us knew each other from before anyway, but a lot of Slytherins are real clannish and, and most of them knew each other through their whole childhood and all, and – and some of them get a little nasty about Muggles. Professor Slughorn's Head of Slytherin, you know."

"But he didn't seem to mind me being Muggle-born!" Lily was astonished that anyone could actually "get nasty" about her. She had wondered if everyone else would already know each other, but never dreamed that people would hate her on that account.

"Well, no, he didn't, I don't think. But _some_ Slytherins, and some other people, would, and I just – I wouldn't go _advertising_ it, if you know what I mean."

Lily wasn't sure she did. She was not the kind of person to do it, and had a sheltered experience not conductive to even imagining it.

She certainly didn't know that come her seventh year she would be a minor celebrity and under a collective social microscope in the midst of an epic war, and that even now the fates had her in preparation, in training for that time, and a time beyond, when –

Anyway. Lily suddenly felt plaintive and angry. "Well, I liked it better too when he thought I was wizard-born. I'm tired of everyone bringing that up all the time. You're all very nice, but can't you just drop it? I'm another things _besides_ Muggle-born, you know."

Trish gave her a peculiar look but humoured her.

"Sure you are," she said agreeably. "Like redheaded."


	5. Family, and a Wotchering Interloper

**A/N: Whew! Last chapter was beautifully original, but there are a lot of things to acknowledge in this. Almost all of them are to smelltastic's "The Other Black Girl." From it I robbed 1) Mr Potter's American accent (actually, in my fic, it may not be American; Andromeda might not be able to tell any ways of speaking besides her own apart), 2) Ted's imitation of Andromeda's aristocratic vowels, 3) the affinity Bellatrix and Sirius originally felt for one another (although in this fic their relationship is quite different – much less close). ****And I'm afraid my favourite "original" bit, Andromeda unknowingly saying again and again "Sirius, quite seriously – " and Ted laughing his head off without revealing why – well, that's an echo of a canonical joke (McGonagall gives Harry the Firebolt back in PoA: "Seriously?" "Seriously.") It's also kind of trite, maybe. I say "maybe" on grounds that it's not like I have anyone trying to claim credit for such a corny pun; it's just one more private joke in Ted's rainbowy little world, which is full of a spectator's appreciation of all the inadvertent humour that is going. **

**Chapter V – Family, and a Wotchering Interloper **

The Sorting Hat was rather ecstatic that year. It approved of Dumbledore and nattered about bright future days of long-needed change while the plurality of conservatives glowered and pestered the Ravenclaws' newspaper with editorials. Speaking of Ravenclaw – the Hat, in its joy, waxed poetic. It sang of Ravenclaw as "where convocave the lithe and throbbing minds." Gryffindors were "hearts all aflame." Slytheirn was the home of "the long, grasping arm." Hufflepuff looked a little suspicious with their place in the symbolic body as "faithful feet and ever forward/ Hufflepuff moves on, and what must be done is done!"

Zeena Dobbs, at the Hufflepuff table, was one of the most suspicious, indeed the most gloweringly so, and had muttered, "Faithful feet? I know where I'd like to stick my faithful foot."

---

Andromeda cringed when she heard his voice. She was going to have quite a busy year, with NEWT prep and great husband hunt which she was supposed to have a direction in by now, and it was going to be very stressful if all this was punctuated intermittently with those too-cheerful, too-loud hails of "Wotcher, Andry!" You give those uppity Mudbloods the barest bit of courtesy – such as apologising for having called them an uppity Mudblood for over three years – and they suddenly think you're intimate acquaintances.

"Hello, Theodore Tonks. Goodbye, if you please."

He continued bounding down the corridor towards her. Ted had something of a girly skip when he was excited, which was often. He fell in step beside her and starting talking as naturally as if they did this every day and were the best of friends.

"So I saw your little cousin get Sorted the other day. Gryffindor, eh? I imagine that's a pretty little smudge on the family tree."

Andromeda was about to sigh exasperatedly, but then she made the mistake of glancing up at him – his overwide mouth, and the most horrible haircut, as if he had set Self-Styling Shears to "riddle with cowlicks" (which was an actual setting on Self-Styling Shears). It was an insidious face, friendly in an asymmetric way, and she found herself sighing and giving in to his company. She couldn't ditch him, they were both on course for Divination, but the trek up to the North Tower was lonely and likely no one would see them. "I'm scared for him. Some of the family's bound to be upset about it, and Aunt Denebola has a horrible temper. He'll be facing a lot of unpleasantness at home."

"Eh, well, the unpleasantness at home will wait. It'll be a nice change after the unpleasantness in Gryffindor for him." Man-like, Ted sincerely thought this all was a very comforting thing to say.

She turned sharply to him. "In Gryffindor! How can the Gryffindors possibly be giving him trouble? There's not a single Gryffindor with a bloodline better than his!"

Ted looked down at her rather pityingly.

"Well, no, I suppose there ain't," he said. "'Course some of them are the type that wouldn't be impressed by bloodlines. Might even have a few scores to settle against the type that _do_ have the bloodlines."

"Ted Tonks, you tell me right now what's going on in plain English or I'll – !"

He laughed. "Oooh, lawdry, Aahndry, yoo te-elling mee aboot playne Eenglish!" He frequently dragged out his vowels in awful imitation of her posh accent, and usually it got a rise, but today she merely hit him with her satchel. It was mild, for her, and had nothing to do with his mimicry-mockery.

"_Tonks_! Who's giving him trouble?"

"Oh, I don't know about giving him trouble, although I think pretty much everybody's ignoring and avoiding him and all. A couple of the kids have insulted him, but there hasn't been any incidents."

"Insulted him how? Who have?"

"Andry, it's nothing big," said Ted, who, if he hadn't been so Hufflepuffishly in the habit of never regretting any excuse to talk to her, would have been busy regretting this excuse to talk to her. "Just typical taunting. It's mainly that little Potter kid in his year – "

"_Potter_!" (All sorts of portraits on the walls awoke with startles.) "Potter lording over Sirius! I've met the Potters before, the Wilkeses were mad enough to invite them to a dinner party once, and the woman yammered on and _on_ about changing the status of merpeople and giving them rights, and the man was so loud, and had the most _awful_ American accent! They're vulgar! They're the most vulgar sort of nouveau riche! They're _commercialists_!"

"Well, then, I'm sure Sirius will be more than a match for him," Ted said, trying to placate and failing. (Possibly he was distracted by thoughts of "noo-voo reesh? The bloody hell is she talking about?")

"The Black heir being ignored and avoided," she murmured, a bit breathlessly after her rant Potter-wards, and rubbing her wrists distractedly. "Heavens."

"Yes, heavens," Ted agreed in amusement. "Heavens to Betsy."

She hesitated just a moment, and then said, "I'm going to go find him. First-years have Friday afternoons off, do they not?"

Ted first considered laughing at the absurd formalness of "do they not," but then realised what she had been saying under that archaic grammar. "What! Andry, you have class in five minutes! – too late – she's off. I s'pose if she stopped long enough to say another word to me it would be 'I'm a _Black_.' Well, it'll be cutting class on my first week back – very prefectly of me – ah well! Andry! Wait up! Lordy, girl, how do you even know where to go? Is this intra-Black telepathy?"

Portraits on the walls were shouting at them that their classroom was the other way and that they would get into trouble and that they were making too much of a racket and interrupting their naps and that running in the corridors with wands out was dangerous. Andromeda and Ted saw and heard them in blurs. They hurtled down to the Great Hall, where a bunch of first-years were at the Ravenclaw table.

"You lot!" Andromeda called imperiously to them. "Do you know where my cousin is?"

Ted watched amazed as they actually knew: one of them had seen the first-year Gryffindors go outside at the last bell, so they had just been in Herbology. It _was_ some sort of Black thing.

"Herbology always runs late to clean up – maybe they're still there," muttered Andromeda. "Tonks, get to class."

"No" – panting – "I'm having so much fun."

He was running ahead to open one of the heavy entrance doors for her when a hot spell barely missed his ear and whizzed onward to open the door. Andromeda slowed long enough to give him a withering look as he stood aside to let her through first. But she was red-faced from her run, and Ted had to grin to himself: she wasn't half so proper as she liked to think she was. No proper Black witch would lowered herself to hurry. She seemed to remember it herself now, and walked sedately to the greenhouses tucked away where one of Hogwarts's wings folded in on itself. Ted whistled (very off-key and all the louder when she gave him an irritated sideways glare). It was a beautiful sunny day without a bit of chill, and under that sun he was walking with Andromeda Black. All in all, cutting Divination had been well worth it – just for this.

They were in luck. All the Gryffindors were still cleaning up what seemed to be the carnage of some fairly inept replotting exercises. Professor Sprout was busy explaining a technique to two girls and Andromeda supremely ignored her altogether as she went to a black-haired boy who was – it was the first and simplest description to come into Ted's head – pretty. Sirius looked up, with studied blankness that relaxed into something almost friendly when Andromeda said, warmly, "Sirius, how are you?"

"I have to clean this up," said Sirius, gesturing to the rich dark soil he and his partner had scattered far beyond their plot.

Andromeda took out her wand impatiently, said a few quick Latin words, and the soil was cleared. "Do you mind?" she asked Sirius's partner.

"Andromeda," hissed Sirius, "do _you _mind?"

"I've heard you've been having trouble in Gryffindor."

"Trouble? I'm not having any trouble," said Sirius, proudly. Ted, who had witnessed evidence to the contrary all week, whistled one low note. "Who's he?"

"Him?" Andromeda was thrown off a moment, hesitating. "He's – "

"You brought a _prefect_?" Sirius hissed. "Andromeda, let me deal with this myself!"

"I didn't bring him. Sirius, quite seriously" – Ted snickered; Andromeda glared as she continued " – he told me you've been having problems here – "

"I'm not."

" – that they're avoiding you – "

"I told you I'm not having problems. Andromeda, you're just going to make things worse."

"There shouldn't be anything to _make _worse," she said fiercely. "What about partners for classes? Charms, and Astronomy, and so forth? And Potions?"

Sirius uncomfortably made an abortive gesture to his equally uncomfortable partner. "He's been partnering me."

"Who're you?" she asked the partner again.

"His name's Remus Lupin," Sirius said.

"Do you want me to leave you alone for a moment?" Remus Lupin asked Sirius, mumblingly under Andromeda's flashing eye.

"No. Andromeda, don't you have a class or something?"

"I hear the Potter boy was giving you trouble."

Sirius gave Ted a glare that Ted had to confess pretty devastating, for an eleven-year-old. "What have you been doing, spying on me?"

"Sorry, mate."

Ted took some satisfaction in Sirius looking surprised to be addressed so familiarly.

"Who's _he_?" he asked Andromeda. Ted began to feel like laughing. Maybe he could stand the Black family. They were pretty amusing when you put them all together.

"I'm Ted Tonks, nice to meet you, sorry if this is too embarrassing."

"Tonks? That's not a Wizarding name. And he's a Hufflepuff," Sirius said to Andromeda, with a nod toward Ted's House colours at his neck. "How do you know _him_?"

Again, Andromeda was flustered. "I – I – Sirius, quite seriously, do you realise you're surrounded here by _Gryffindors_? And I think _your _friend is a half-blood!" she said, accusingly.

"Oooooooo," said Ted, who found all of this, and his own wise and witty contributions, endlessly amusing.

Lupin, who looked even fragiler than first-years in general (if the best Ted could do to describe Sirius was "pretty," with Lupin the chief adjective to come to mind was "little"), seemed to consider making a run for it, with or without Sirius's permission, so Ted grinned at him and adopted a false accent that was not a bad imitation of the Blacks'. He was quite a good mimic of voices when he wasn't actively caricaturing them for the sake of getting a reaction from interestingly uptight girls. "Greetings, fellow sufferer-of-awkwardness. Shall we begin our own conversation and talk about these strange creatures, commonly known as the Blacks, as if they were not present?"

"Tonks, if you don't like it, get back to class!" said Andromeda.

"Look, where's this kid Potter?" asked Ted. "How about I just talk to him? You know, a big scary well-built prefect to scrawny little bratling bully heart-to-heart?"

Andromeda needed a second to digest this, but Sirius didn't. "No!" he said, whisper-shouting.

"I see him," said Andromeda viciously. "He's over there. I can tell, his father had hair just like that, it stuck out everywhere."

Sirius was staring up at them with horrible opinions of both rocketing throughout his bloodstream. Ted, who normally knew no shame, suddenly felt some shame, not because the kid's scorn pierced him, but because it couldn't. It was hard to see someone scarcely over the age of ten looking so defiantly helpless against the conspiring forces of nature and fate.

"Andromeda, if you do I'll – "

"Yes?" asked Andromeda grandly. She had absently picked up the trowel and now jabbed it at thin air to emphasize her points. "You'll do what exactly, Master Sirius? You don't have Bella on your side to back you up anymore, remember."

"I don't need Bellatrix, and I don't need you!" Sirius's teeth were at the clenching stage, his whisper at the hissing. "All you two know is Slytherin, and in case you haven't noticed, this isn't Slytherin!"

"I'll say it's not. Look you to him – "

"His name's Lupin," said Tonks, to annoy her under the guise of being helpful, because nothing pleased him so well as seeing Andromeda annoyed.

" – once upon a time, if I have him pegged right, and small blame to me if I don't, his grandfather was practically a servant to our uncle, and was grateful for the privilege."

Both the younger boys needed a second to recover from this.

Sirius glared at her. "I don't care about our grandfathers and uncles. He's my ally – "

"Ally?" In amusement. "Now that's a strictly Slytherin term, I thought."

" – and if you go talk to Potter you'll make him seem right about me being a spoilt pureblooded brat – "

"He's no right to say that!" Andromeda was loud in her outrage.

" – and you'll only make me seem more, more – _vulnerable_, and – "

"Vulnerable?" Ted nodded consideringly. "Quite a mouthful for a kid like you. I didn't know that word at your age."

All three of them stared at him. He noticed this, and the abrupt ceasefire, with a mild shrug.

Andromeda spoke first. "Tonks, you're mad. Go back – "

"I'll tell."

She looked down at her cousin. "Excuse?"

Sirius was a miniature maharajah. "If you talk to Potter, then I'll tell the family about _him_."

"_My _name's Tonks," said the same, now annoyed himself, but Andromeda was beyond annoyance and into alarm, foreseeing her defeat.

"What!"

"Keep it down," said Ted and Sirius, at roughly the same time.

"What's there to _tell_?" she said, in an obedient whisper.

Sirius smirked with the superiority of the pre-pubescent immune at the mucksome follies to which the strange disease of sexual love leads his elders. Of course, he probably had no words to explain what "it" was, but that smirk alone was enough.

"I care nothing about him," said Andromeda, but clearly unnerved. "I care about _you_ – "

"Awww," said Ted, with a smirk of his own.

"There's nothing to tell, Sirius, I'm seriously quite – "

Ted burst into laughter just in time for Professor Sprout to make her way over, as dumpy and dirty a plebeian as Andromeda Black could ever have wished for, but the latter had to submit to the former anyway. Although I don't think "submit" accurately describes the haughty acquiescence Andromeda gave to Professor Sprout's reasoned request that they leave, as her next class was pouring in. During their exit little Lupin gave them the slip, which somewhat placated Andromeda, as if she had won at least one of the battles even whilst drawing the less favourable side of the truce.

"All right, Sirius, quite seriously," she said as they began one lap around the entire castle, setting Ted off again, " – Tonks, _what _are you laughing about?"

"Something very immature," he said in a muffled voice. "Something humourous only to commoners like myself, I'm sure."

"You see?" Andromeda appealed to Sirius. "There's nothing to tell. He's insane. He's a stalker. I can't get rid of him."

"Bella could get rid of him for you."

Ted ceased adjusting his bag over his shoulder to give Sirius the sternest look he could muster (Sirius didn't seem remotely affected). "Now see here, young man. There's _no_ call for that. I thought we was _clean_ with each other."

"But, really, Sirius, I'm sorry if I went about it wrong. I'm just trying to help you. You know that."

"I know that. But you can't." With the excitement over, he was retreating within himself.

"Don't let them push you around."

"I'm not. But I'm not going to treat them like I'm better than they are, either!"

"But in a way you are. No, listen, seriously, it's not just the name, it's the upbringing. No, _listen _to me. Why would you let that Potter boy intimidate you? You are ten times more intelligent, more educated, more knowledgeable – I'll bet he's a right naïve prat, no?"

_Invita minerva_, Sirius fought but did not entirely pin a smile.

"But honestly, Andromeda, I – " He was on the verge. With difficulty but without noise, he toppled over the reserve. "I could like him."

"Fine," she said, "like him, hate him, whatever, but act like a human being with a shred of dignity. Don't let the liking take place at _his _charity. Remember that you understand how this world works, and that he's some of the ignorant machinery."

Clever of her, to appeal to that rather than the name itself. Because after all, reflected Ted, she is not dumb. Not at all. She's cunning as they come. And he can't see for the life of him how the blind Administration overlooked _her _for prefect, in favour of that Erstwhistle girl.

'That Erstwhistle girl,' a pureblood so impoverished as to be thrown out of Slytherin high society, was the most intelligent and most accomplished student currently within the school, and was much more diligent than Andromeda would ever be. Ted despised her for the slight he perceived towards Andromeda in the prefectorial matter. That tyranny of acute, worldly, practical, supportive girls oppressing the beautiful and self-absorbed disgusted him.

"Don't call him a piece of ignorant machinery," said Sirius in annoyance.

"I thought we agreed he's a naïve prat."

"It's not the same. And earlier, you bringing up that nonsense about Lupin's grandfather or whatever. No one cares about that. I didn't think you were the sort to care. You always said yourself that sort of thing was silly."

Ted smiled at the distant forest. Andromeda did not cringe to have him discover that she was not so much a snob as she liked to pretend, for she was too deeply engrossed with Sirius. He liked that, too, her concern for the brat. He liked her – in case you hadn't noticed.

"Well, it is, and I didn't care, exactly," Andromeda was saying, conceding. "It's good to _know_ about people's backgrounds, though, you know. I'm glad he's partnering you and so forth. If you must be around these types – well, the Lupins are a decent family, even if the boy's father is strictly speaking a blood traitor. But I was in rather a difficult position there, you know. I had to talk to you, and with him and _him _around – "

"He's still here."

"You see?" yelped Ted. "You see how cruelly I'm used?"

"The trick is to ignore him," said Andromeda, to Sirius.

"Like you did in there."

"I told you, I was in a difficult position. I was _worried_ about you."

"Well. Thanks."

They walked on in silence only for a few moments when Andromeda said, "Have you heard from your parents?"

"Yes." So briefly that anyone's hopes of hearing the content of was dashed.

"Regulus?"

"He wouldn't write this soon."

Another pause. Andromeda seemed to want to sweat Sirius out. Sirius did have the air of someone who wanted to speak very badly, and exorcise a fine rant, and possibly – yes, maybe even a good cry – and Ted was aware that he was definitely in the way, for the kid wouldn't let his storm of emotions loose for anyone but Andromeda alone, but too they were approaching the front doors again, so Andromeda sighed and said, "Look, Sirius. I'm sorry if I almost aggravated your problems there. You're right: I probably don't know how to help you. But if you do need help, and you can tell me how to do it – "

"Mm-hm."

"You promise you'll come to me then?"

"Sure," he said, with so little hesitation that he couldn't possibly be sincere.

"I'm _sorry_, Sirius."

"I know. It's fine." And he sounded like he meant this, at least.

"I don't care that you wound up in Gryffindor, you know. I was almost," she said, with the air of letting someone in on a weighty secret, "put there too."

"You were?" Sirius was interested, in the contained way that Blacks were allowed to be interested. "How did you get into Slytherin, then?"

"I asked the Hat to put me there."

"But – so did I."

They stared at each other. Having no one to stare at, Ted stared at them. It was odd. He offered, to their rather sad bewilderment, "Well, mate, you must be just impossibly Gryffindorish, then."

Andromeda threw a scowl and a glare over her shoulder at him. Sirius shrugged and said, "I don't care. I'm glad to be at Hogwarts anyway. It's better than being at home. It's not so dark, there's so much in it – " He broke off.

Andromeda considered him. "I can see that. That's something then." She waited for him to speak, and gave it up with, "I do remember how you've been waiting the past few years to come here. So long as – well – all right, I suppose Tonks and I have got to get back to class – "

"You had class now?" asked Sirius, dismayed again at this evidence of her interfering instinct.

"No matter," Ted said jovially, "this was much more educational than anything Professor Madley had to teach us! You take care."

Andromeda and Sirius parted with nary a mark of tactile affection – hug, half-hug, brief touch of shoulder, ruffling of hair – common to the young and slightly older protective cousins. Ted couldn't help thinking them a tad cold. Andromeda was deep in thought and did not seem to mind when Ted got away with holding the door open for her this time. Two floors up and Ted realised that they had not yet run into any teachers – though doubtless had they been totally innocent they would have been interrogated and disbelieved by half the staff already. Although perhaps such concerns were unique to the young students, who saw the stiff hand of Authority in every corner. Nevertheless, as they waited for their staircase to arrive at the second-floor landing –

"Andry, I'm scared," said Ted, adopting a mock-pathetic tone for an appeal only he could have imagined winsome, "hold my hand."

"Scared of what?" With the impatience of those disturbed in thought.

"Big scary professors. Madley's talking-to. Vanishing steps. Producing a weebil on my Transfiguration NEWT. Ooh, Andry, have pity, I'm a very sad case…"

"That's plain enough."

"You know, Andry" – as he put a hand to her back as if to gallantly escort her onto the stairwell, which had arrived with a floosh – "when you think about it, I've been your crutch of support now through two rather large personal family moments. You'll have to start considering me as at least a friend…"

"I consider you most pathetic – crutch of support, indeed! – I consider you as I consider bad weather. To be weathered." She was rather proud of that bit of clever word-play, but promptly dashed when Ted beamed down at her.

"Now _that_'s something! Time was you wouldn't have admitted that you considered me as anything at all…"

She scowled the darkest of Black scowls. But they were rising and slowly revolving on a finite surface, and she could do nothing.

**TBC**


	6. Right around Moonrise

_A/N: "But, Jobey, what are you going to do with Noxing now that you're cutting great whacks of it out to use in So Help Him?" – "Oh, I'll worry about that once I run out of pre-written chapters concerning the '71-'72 year."_

**Chapter VI – Right Around Moonrise **

This is another half-and-half chapter.

Remus is wondering what to examine first. He wants to know how big this place is. He wants to follow that dusky yellow light at the top of the stairs. He's curious as to this mishmash of furniture. All sorts of odds and ends. He tries to imagine where the bits and pieces came from. At the moment it's all like a great playhouse. Only no one can play under these circumstances. It's all very weird.

He feels rather wrong-footed. Usually this wait is a horrible time while his insides are curling up and dying of terror. It also used to be the time for near-hysterics when it came time to go down to the cellar. It was, anyway, until – one night when he was fast dragging his mother into hysteria as well – his father stopped it. His father was almost a Squib, but this was one of those times he managed to set off a goodly explosion about one centimetre from Remus's ear. After one good rap to get his son wide-eyed and quiet, his father told him (Remus was seven then) that he was far too old for this. Much to his mother's dismay this all made a deep impression on her son, and she was often to be found muttering darkly about the stupidity of having married into the infamous, godforsaken Lupin reserve. "It's not _natural_," she would tell her husband, as angrily as if she, as a Muggle, was not living with a wizard and a werewolf, chained to unnaturality. "When facing something like this children are _supposed to cry_."

Sometimes Remus did while waiting alone. But tonight he is nowhere near it. For he still only half believes the transformation is going to take place. It seems only natural that the transformations cannot fit into this new life. And what you cannot – quite – believe cannot – quite – be dreaded.

He decides he's most curious about that floating light, which is nor lamp nor candle nor bulb, but simply a round glow of light, and goes up the stairs – step by step, ever so lightly, for no reason he could really explain. But then, there's no one to have to explain it to.

When he's about two feet from the dusky yellow light, with a sort of startle, it scoots back. Briefly he tries to give it chase, but soon realizes, with a hint of laughter, that however it's been enchanted he will not be able to touch it. Now, when he gives up, he soon discovers that _it _is following _him_ – though at a safe, almost wary distance. He turns around again, sharply, and the light darts back – ashamed to be caught. He laughs at it. The laughter sounds only semi-ghastly.

There are all sorts of rooms here. Remus wonders who once lived here. The whole house is actually in Hogsmeade, which rather unnerves him, and Dumbledore said there wouldn't be any silencing, because no one would guess at what the noises are, and meanwhile they'd be scared enough to stay well away, which would best protect the safety of all involved – Remus shoves these thoughts out of the head. The 'infamous, godforsaken Lupin reserve,' though less marked in him, does not like the idea of everyone hearing him screaming and howling. Anyway – these are all bedrooms up here, and some are still vaguely set up as such. One has a large bed. Madam Pomfrey told him there would be such and suggested rather strongly that he lay down to wait, but the mere thought of lying still makes him feel sick. Six – _seven _bedrooms in all. Remus himself comes from a small and by necessity often reclusive nuclear family of three, but just two years ago they went to visit his cousins. His parents thought that he would be overwhelmed, and perhaps he was a little, but it was an overwhelment that he very much liked, and it was a great disappointment when his mother and Aunt Christabel fought and they left early. The Sedleys have five children, some others who are sort of adopted or staying for the summer or something (Remus never really got their relation straight), and Nicky's friend who did everything but sleep with the family, and that too one night out of six, and, come to that, each one of them had friends who often camped over, for Aunt Chrissy's was very agreeable. What a fortnight! No, he did like that, just as he now loves Hogwarts.

In bedroom number four (Remus already has them numbered in his head from left to right), there is a bureau. The light follows him diffidently into the room – ever useful, that light, for all the windows have been boarded up. He cannot resist opening each drawer in turn, even though there's nothing there, not even mothballs – although everything is old, it's actually been made quite clean, and the house is not dusty at all. Still, the first two drawers have dividers. The second drawer is a rather unimaginative two-by-two affaire, but the first – divided into sixteen hexagonal sections, some of them padded with crimson velvet – for earrings or something like that. Remus loves the first drawer. It's so cleverly geometrical and has all sorts of little trick compartments. He might be socialable on one end, but on the other he has years of isolation that have given him all the habits of any lonely child, and one month at a flamingly magical boarding school isn't enough to undo his long love for little boxes and keys and knickknacks.

He gives a sudden, violent twitch. And then, with great mental trickery, forgets it.

Downstairs again. The light stays at the edge of the first-floor landing. He thunders down the stairs as noisily as possible, as if to annoy prim imaginary newspaper readers in the farce of a living room. Is there a kitchen? It would be interesting if there were – there is. In the first pantry there is a little family of dormice. He watches them for a moment.

Then he finds he has no desire to open the others. There's nothing there, there's nothing anywhere, it's all emptiness, and it's _dark_. He really almost wishes that trapdoor hadn't sealed shut, he really rather liked better that lovely long tunnel. It was much more distracting.

He's bursting into shudders and all sorts of painful nerves are beginning to twist…

---

Everything bare – there's not a trace of tangy bitter life anywhere around him, save himself! It's with irritation that he lopes around this unnatural place, and fury that he only finds himself bumping his snout into barriers (which, incidentally, ouches). On _the other side _of that barrier – argh! Remus can scent it, there's grass at any rate, it's the real world! Who was so cruel as to enclose him? It's a great injury – cannot be tolerated – _will _not be tolerated, even as he experiences these feelings he's scratching at the walls. It hurts! but he hurts already, existence is pain, especially existence without blood – he cannot stand it anymore, he will not stand it, how can he think to get out without that which makes existence not tolerable but at least gloriously intolerable? Impatiently he scratches his underbelly and licks.

And then with rage charges the wall. Nothing is worse than _that _blood – in some way so right, so reminiscent of the blood he knows he loves although he has never in fact tasted it, it's half-right, it's almost perfect, but then that maddening contamination! He's furious, furious, running around without aim, only on lunatic hopes. The ground has just thrown him back. Furious, he charges the same spot of ground, it's against him, just as the rest of the world, all ganging up against him to conquer him, _who shall not be conquered_. Charge! Remus struggles to slip and scrape up the ground – it's up, like a hill, but nothing, nothing like a hill, his claws keep snapping on them as he comes down hard upon the ridges – half of the claws break, and at each he howls in fury.

But he's terribly determined. He does made his rather bloody way up that unnatural ridge-ridden ground, only to be nearly blinded by the light (which merits another chilling howl). He despises that light! It's supposed to be _night_, it's supposed to be _dark_, it always is, what's the light for! He tries to pounce on it. It darts away. Still, the general principle was sound. He pounces on a scratchy armchair and returns the scratchiness fifty for one. The chair is the manifestation of injustice in all existence! He destroys it, or halfway destroys it, before losing interest. He hungers again – still – unbearably. It's too cruel, he will have it, he will nothave it, he ought to finish up the job on that chair, but first – contorting on the floor, wildly, with all ill coordination, he feeds on himself – but briefly, for again, that cheat, the very blood within him is all a cheat. Now _he _is the manifestation of injustice in all existence – he despises himself. He's pleased when he rams into the wall again, dazed only for the moment. Oh-h-h-h, his snout! But there is pain all around, and that is – bad, very bad, but everything is bad _without proper blood_ – he's scuffling about with no direction. There is a wooden thing, a dead truncated tree. Already his claws are so worn, bloody and sore and raw, but, merciless to himself as to anything, uses that rawness to give that deadwood what-for. The top drawer falls out, on his head. It's unbearable. He must get out. He charges the wall, the pain doubles, the only solution is to charge again, he must get out, out – !

Here's been only half an hour this side of moonrise, but that's enough of this, I imagine.

* * *


End file.
